A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  “Yea,” said the king, settling into the chair the other side of the brazier. “We shall summon the lady first.”

  Proud and disdainful, Katherine walked before the usher into that warm chamber; and abrupt, almost insolent, was the brief curtsey she gave; while with amused approval, king and cardinal noted that she had dressed with care as for a lovers’ meeting. Her gown, body-tight across the back and bosom, was of crimson cloth embroidered with silver roses, and from under the drooping girdle it flowed out in fluted folds almost to the floor. So expertly had her ladies painted her that it could not be seen whether she were pale, and her eyes gave no sign that she had been weeping, although the lids were dark and appeared to be pinched towards the edges. Above the high shaven forehead and temples, her hair was concealed under a red embroidered headdress which dipped in the middle and had a transparent gold-spangled veil drooping from it down her back.

  “Be seated, lady,” said the king.

  Sweeping aside her skirt that it might not crumple, she took the empty chair between king and cardinal. And there she sat like a statue, painted eyelids downcast, hands folded in her lap, like a maiden shy in the company of men.

  “Well, lady,” said the king at last, “at your word, we’ll have your husband join us. We thought that mayhap you would prefer a little time first in which to compose yourself.”

  “Why?” she asked, opening wide her eyes. “Does a wife need to command her feelings when she meets her husband after long parting?”

  “You realize, madam,” said the cardinal suddenly, seeming to pounce at her, “that your husband’s future, his very life or death, rests on this evening? that if he proves stubborn in his treason, he must die for it?”

  “What else have I had to think about all day?” she asked.

  The king sat erect and nodded to the usher, who backed from the room; and in silence, the three sat, not looking openly at one another but each staring into the pulsing heat of the brazier as though they saw in the red-hot charcoal, as in a wizard’s fire, portents both great and dangerous. From the corners of his eyes, the king watched Katherine, noting with admiration yet without desire the weight of her bosom curved with shadows under the candlelight, and the long, broad length of her thigh. Her hairless face was unwrinkled, yet at the moment it seemed lumpish, lacking that life under the skin which can make even ordinary women enchanting and desirable. The lower lip sagged, the eyes were darkened with lack of sleep, and her shoulders drooped.

  When the door opened, suddenly she began to tremble and a glint showed in the blue of her eyes before she lowered the lids, and almost did she rise out of her chair; but after the one quick glance towards the door, her cheeks reddening, she sank down again and stared again sullenly into the fire.

  Not having been warned of her presence, Perkin gaped at her. Determined on defiance, no matter how terrible the threats, he had stridden amongst the guards to this chamber, and the unexpected sight of the woman he loved drained the defiance away with his strength. Trembling, he stood and dared not speak lest she answer him cruelly.

  “Here is your lady come like a true wife to visit you, Master Warbeck,” smiled the king. “Have you naught to say to her?”

  “What — what can I say?” muttered Perkin in a shaking voice. “How can I welcome her in my captivity?”

  “The lady is no captive,” said the king merrily. “She is free, sirrah, as free as you might be if you would tell the truth.”

  “I have already told the truth,” said Perkin, watching Katherine. “I am Prince Richard, second son of King Edward IV of England; and I am not Perkin Warbeck.”

  “There!” groaned the king. “We warned you, lady. He is drunk on dreams and set on martyrdom. How can we be blamed if he is determined to have his head cut off? … Listen, Master Warbeck; we cannot waste the hours of having you questioned again and again, we cannot keep you in our court to be used by disgruntled folk against us, and we cannot let you go back into the world to mislead other simpletons as you misled so many unhappy Cornishmen to their deaths. What are we to do with you, except to hang you?”

  Lady Katherine flinched at the word, but Perkin gave no flicker of fear. As though he had not heard the threat, he remained silent, his eyes on Katherine’s eyes when slowly she looked up and coolly stared at him.

  “I warned you aboard the Cuckoo,” she said in flat tones, “that it was time to end your mummery; but you’d not heed me, you abused me for it. When then you had the chance, you refused to seek safety in Burgundy but drove on to your doom, a felon’s hanging, leaving a widow to feed on shame at your disgrace. You never thought of me.”

  “Mother of God,” he cried, “I thought of little else. What did I care for a crown until I had met you!”

  “Hey!” she giggled, “so you’d make me the advocate of your treason?”

  “Nay,” he said; “yet it is the truth. How else could I return the gift of your love save with a crown, as I could not steal the moon? There was nothing else worthy of being given you.”

  “Another man’s crown?” she jeered.

  “Mine,” said Perkin, “mine by my inheritance.”

  Suddenly, loudly, she laughed, nor did she attempt to conceal her laughter. Throwing back her head, she laughed at him; and the white smooth curve of her throat tempted his hands until he clenched them from temptation and hid them at his back.

  “What is it that Perkin Warbeck will inherit?” she cried when laughter lessened. “A tumbledown house, no doubt, and not even a bâton sinister to show his true father’s name. You are a fool, Perkin Warbeck; and greatest fool in thinking that I was your fool. Aboard the Cuckoo — aptly named, Cuckoo! — weakened and made timorous by the storm, I gave you the opportunity to escape. I told you then what I knew of your past doings; and you lied to me as you have always lied to me, wooing me on a He, and now you would continue the lie to my shame, making a mocking-stock of me, a pensioner of England.”

  “He cannot keep you prisoner. Whatever my sins; you are innocent.”

  “I am still your wife, you tricked me into that and it cannot be wiped off by a word. I am the wife and soon I will be the widow of a madman who never thought about or cared for me. Go, fool, continue with your silly lies. I am weary of them.”

  Flushed, he stood, glaring about him, bewildered before this attack when he had expected applause for his courage, and he could not understand why she should want him to confess to having been a cheat. If he were to die, surely she would have preferred being the widow of royalty than the widow of a self-confessed and cowardly bar? Yet if he told the truth, doubtless he would not have to die, being no longer dangerous to the king … Giddied by that thought, not daring to believe that he yet might be permitted to live, suddenly he wondered whether Katherine loved him truly. Was her love so great that she was ready to share his degradation and console him in it? He had heard of such self-sacrifice in women, yet had seen no proof of it.

  “Tell me,” he whispered, “tell me, do you love me?”

  Stiffly she sat, and a slow flush darkened her skin, her lower lip swelled out and her breathing became heavier. Well did he know and fear these signs of anger or impatience and he wondered in what way had he blundered.

  “It is not for the woman to woo,” she said at last in a stony voice, “not is it my sex’s habit to tell our secrets to a man. What is in my heart remains locked in my heart. In the past, I have been weak enough on occasions with you to furnish proofs of what should have been hidden and to show in action what can never be put into words. May God be thanked that I never kindled and carry no liar’s seed within me. Yet if I was weak enough to love you, or to believe once that I loved you, I can love you no longer. Lies may cozen a woman for a time, but we need more wholesome diet if you’d have us true. I could, mayhap, love an honest man with all my soul and body, even though he were but Perkin Warbeck of Tournay; but I could never care for a cheat, a man in another’s gear, not even h
is name his own.”

  White-faced, Perkin flinched from her contempt, then he whispered: “What would you have me do?”

  “The truth!” she cried. “The truth, for once.”

  “And if I were to tell you what I believe is true,” he said, “will you forgive me and cleave to me always?”

  “I make no bargains, sir,” she cried.

  Helplessly, from her he looked to the king watching him from under heavy lids; and from the king to the cardinal tightly smiling; and finally at the clerk leaning with poised pen over the parchment, his shaven poll like a skinned onion in the candlelight. Then he looked again on Katherine, sighing at her dark anger and bright eyes, her body unyielding as stone within the red gown; then in a low voice, he began to speak.

  While he talked, he stared at Katherine, trying in vain to read her eyes; but with neither disgust nor approval did she watch him, listening to his tale which, if true, disparaged her as the wife of a commoner, a merchant’s son, who had travelled much of the world in the entourage of several wealthy men. Not until he came to tell of the day in Cork when the Irish had greeted him, calling him Clarence’s son, did his voice begin to falter. Until that moment, his had been a merry youth, the wanderings of a gay lad, merry and lecherous, like most lads, and snapping his fingers at the future; but the welcome in Ireland, where the Yorkist kings had been loved because of the justness of their rule, had set the dangerous seeds of ambition in his heart. At first, amused by the greeting, he had then become worried and angry, insisting that he was not Clarence’s boy. Even when they had carried him before the mayor, he had insisted that he was Perkin Warbeck and no duke. They would not heed his protests. Before the mayor, he swore by the name of God that they were mistaken in him. Still, they would not heed him. If not Clarence’s son, said they, he must be one of King Richard’s bastards; and this, too, he had denied; but also, he had begun to marvel and to hope. In no way did he look like a Warbeck; they were dark while he was fair; they were little while he was tall; and he wondered whether his mother when young had been tempted by that lecherous king. He could not blame her for so glorious a sin; rather was he grateful to her for it, should it be true, proving that half of him at least was of nobler clay than any of his fellows.

  All this did he tell these three people and the clerk, no longer concealing anything, so that Katherine might love him, as she had half-promised. Then, when he swore that he was not Clarence’s or Richard’s bastards, her eyelids lifted and her gaze grew steadier.

  But the Irish, he said, had remained unsatisfied. If neither Clarence’s nor Richard’s, they argued, he must be the Duke of York, the second son of Edward IV. Nor would they listen to his denials. “Have no fear,” they told him; “we are determined to be revenged on Henry Tudor.” And before their persistence, weakly, excited in a dream of greatness, he had given way. He was Prince Richard, they said, escaped from the Tower.

  “And so,” he sighed, “against my will they made me to learn more English and taught me what to say and do.”

  “That,” said the cardinal, “is the second time you’ve told us that you learned our tongue. Did you not say just now that you had studied the language under one John Strewe of Middleburgh?”

  “Yea,” said Perkin, “but I had forgotten much before I reached Ireland and what I had learned was not the language for a king.”

  “You said,” insisted the cardinal, “that after leaving Middleburgh, you were in the household of the wife of Sir Edward Brampton and went with her into Portugal. Did she not speak English?”

  “Yea,” said Perkin, still watching Katherine in the hope of some gesture of approbation. “I knew the tongue, my lord, but, as I said, I had forgotten much, not bothering to study further.”

  “It is of no importance,” said the king, relaxing in his chair. “Now, Master Warbeck, since at last you have been honest with us, we will be honest towards you. This confession of yours must be repeated in London, and elsewhere, wherever we might deem fit; and you will be allowed sufficient liberty in our court that you’ll suffer no harm so long as you show yourself meek and grateful. You must also write a letter to your mother in Tournay, setting out the truth about yourself, that it will be known abroad as being your honest confession. Meanwhile, we will show ourselves no harsh jailer and your servitude will not be irksome. We will not even deprive you of the consolation of your lady’s company lest, for lack of her, you prove yourself unchaste and bring scandal on our court.”

  “No,” wailed Katherine. “No!”

  Gone were her defences, her hauteur, her cold glances. Eyes shining like a madwoman’s, nostrils distended and lips curled to show the teeth as though she would bite, she glared up at her husband.

  “Coward,” she cried, crumpling her gown in both hands. “I knew you for a cur at bottom. Now, beyond all argument, are you base-born, a bastard, to swear away your royalty that you might creep into' dishonoured living. Nay! do not touch me, sirrah! Sufficient already is my disgust to turn me into a nunnery away from men, that I, a royal Gordon, sib of Scotland’s king, should so far have forgotten my good fame as to disparage myself forever, degraded in name as well as in body by that filthy union. A coward, sirrah, that’s what you are, a coward! Rather would I that you had continued the brave lie and shown your tongue at fate, but to crawl like this on your belly that you might continue to live your evil life … O, I am sick and my body is fouled beyond cleansing.”

  “I thought,” he gasped, “I thought you wanted me to tell the truth, or what I believe to be truth?”

  “Must I carry the blame for every stupidity, for every treason and trickery you might do! I’ll not have it, I tell you, sirrah, I’ll not have it, not I! You lack the heart to act without the crutch of someone for your little spirit, even a woman’s weak authority. For love of me, you say you lied; and now, also for love of me, you say, you shame me here before this king. How could I ever have been so great a fool not to. have seen the coward and low-born traitor in your eyes? Bothwell and many others warned me of it.”

  “But you knew … you told me aboard the Cuckoo …”

  “Well named cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo, am I, my God, cuckoo … Yea, then, like a fool, I unpacked my heart with all my doubts, thinking any moment we must die, and you swore to me that you were Richard. Who was I to argue against your oath? and you were a ready liar. And now, now at the end, to tell your enemies that you are Warbeck! I hoped, I kept on hoping, thinking you would play the man. You have taken my hopes from me and my faith in men. O, had you but stayed steadfast … but no! you had, smouch-faced, to tell your list of lies and trickeries …”

  “Why did you ask me for it? I had no intention of telling, I was determined not to tell, until you … O, God, whatever I do is wrong. I thought to please you, to do as you bade me, and now you hate me for it.”

  “All women hate a coward. Mother of God,” she moaned; “I know not what I do or say. I know not even what I want … I thought I wished you free at any price; and then I knew I’d hate you were you free at the price of such dishonour. Then again I thought: But free! what matters beside freedom and love? Alas! there can be no freedom when your heart is in chains; there is no love when you despise the lover. I’d have been happier had you died in battle or under the executioner’s axe, a brave lie on your lips to the last. Then might your cause have sown dragon-seeds. You did not think of that? This king is wiser than you and he has trapped you cleverly. Often dead men can be more dangerous than a living foe. The dead princes of King Edward are proof of that. Being now dead, any coward can wear their” armour, as you thought to wear it. Had you died in a manner worthy of the great name you stole, the cause which you pretend would have been strengthened. Now, with this confession, you have plucked the White Rose up by the roots forever.”

  “What care I for any other white rose than yourself?”

  “Nay,” she jeered, “why should you care for it, bastard son of bastard folk? What did
it matter if the White Rose died so long as weeds should flourish? You have, shown yourself a profitable ally to this king, who should have been your enemy and is now your master; you have proved yourself more precious to him than conquest in the field. Now must the White Rose droop and die, Simnel in a kitchen and you with a ring through your nose. This is an excellent king who shows his wisdom; said you, you thought to outwit, and conquer such a man!”

  Perkin tried to speak but choked on the words. To please her, he had come to this chamber, set on dying as Richard; then, again to please her, had he confessed that he was Perkin Warbeck; and both times he had angered her. Then what was he to do? Both as Prince Richard and as Perkin Warbeck had she repudiated him.

  “I know not who I am,” he cried, maddened by her scorn. “They call me Prince Richard, they call me Warbeck, they even call me Brampton and say that I am a Jew. How, in God’s great name, am I to find the truth? A baby has no memories of the womb and never knows who gave it suck. Men swore that I was Plantagenet, they said that I was the very butterprint of Edward; others recognized King Richard in my eyes or Clarence in my gait. How could I tell which of them was lying? How do I know even now if I am truly Perkin Warbeck?”

  “O, you are Perkin Warbeck. No argument on that,” she said, and almost spat at him. “Only a base-born knave could act so cowardly. You said your stomach turned against killing Englishmen, but my sib, the king, knew otherwise. He knew you for a coward and from that moment was he sorry that he had made me marry you. It was too late, alas, and I was damned as yours … I should have known from that, but I thought myself wiser than my king … You are a coward. Therefore you are no Plantagenet.”

  “I tell you I don’t know for certain who I am!”

  “I hoped. With high hopes did I come here this night. I thought to see you bravely outfacing fear. I tested you and you showed at once the dross beneath your skin.”